Watch what happens when educators put differentiation to work in real classrooms!
Based on research and the authors’ experiences at one remarkable elementary school, this book describes what schoolwide differentiation looks like in practice. The authors show school administrators how differentiated instruction can be successfully implemented schoolwide and provide teachers with authentic tools for the classroom. Readers will find:
- Nine sample lesson plans from various disciplines and grade levels
- Teacher and student voices describing their experiences with differentiation
- A chapter on supporting schoolwide implementation through coaching
- Sample preassessments
- Strategies for designing and refining lessons
Lane Narvaez is a coauthor of the book The Differentiated School: Making Revolutionary Changes in Teaching and Learning. She has been the principal at Conway Elementary in the Ladue School District, St. Louis, Missouri, for the past 14 years. She has served as an administrator at the elementary, middle, high school, and district levels. Lane has worked in the public school systems of New York, Arizona, and Missouri and has 28 years of teaching/administrative experience. She has worked in at-risk as well as affluent school communities. Degrees include a bachelor of arts from Hunter College (New York), a masters in reading from Manhattan College (New York), and a doctorate in reading from Arizona State University. Narvaez’s research interests include mentoring the beginning teacher, curriculum, and instruction and schoolwide differentiation. She has presented at the following national conferences: ATE(Association of Teacher Educators), AERA (American Educational Research Association), and ASCD (Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development).
She has also presented at the Summer Institute of Academic Diversity at the University of Virginia and the Oxford Round Table in Oxford, England, on her work involving schoolwide differentiation. For the past four years she has worked with Henry County School district in Virginia to help implement differentiation throughout the schools in the district. She has served as a coach in differentiation for schools in Virginia and California, working with teachers and administrators as they implement differentiation in their schools.
Kay Brimijoin is currently associate professor and chair of the Education Department at Sweet Briar College in central Virginia, where she helped launch a master’s program in differentiated curriculum and instruction and teaches courses on curriculum and instruction, assessment, literacy development, and student teaching. After 20 years of K-12 classroom teaching experience and school administration, Brimijoin completed her PhD in educational psychology with concentrations in gifted education and curriculum and instruction at the University of Virginia. She has received awards on curriculum design, research and evaluation, and distinguished dissertation work from the National Association for Gifted Children. She co-authored
The Differentiated School in 2008 (ASCD) and a unit in
Differentiation in Practice: Grades 9-12 in 2005 (ASCD). Brimijoin has authored numerous articles and co-authored a 2003 review of the literature supporting differentiation. From 2000-2006 Brimijoin was a member of the ASCD Differentiation Faculty Cadre and continues to consult with schools across the country on differentiation, curriculum design, gifted education, and teacher education.
